TM
Krishna’s A Southern Music is one of the most important books to emerge
in the recent history of Carnatic music. (If the book uses the spelling
Karnatik rather than Carnatic in an attempt at authenticity, it should have
really gone the whole hog and said Karnatak or Karnataka).
Its
importance lies in its earnest attempt to explain a complex system of what it
terms as art music to a reader who may or may not be exposed to its nuances,
but even more in the kind of questions technical, philosophical and
sociological it raises.
The
value of the book is further enhanced by the fact that the author is a young
musician, a star vocalist at that, some of whose recent actions on and off the
performance stage have led to a variety of mixed reactions ranging from amused
to angry (not excluding adoring) from his audiences. The book serves to answer
some of the questions agitating them as to the rationale behind some of the
structural changes he has been attempting in the concert format as it exists today.
Of
the three parts of the book entitled The Experience, The Context and The
History, the author appears to strike mid-season form in the first part,
especially in the chapter on manodharma, the art of improvisation.
Elaborating the contours of alapana (or raga
exploration without the aid of verse or tala), for example, Krishna takes us on
a tour-de-force as beautifully crafted as a memorable alapana by an
accomplished artist.
One
of the major distinctions Krishna sets out to make from the popular discourse
on Carnatic music lies in his choice of the phrase ‘art music’ to describe it,
something that Sruti magazine (which is mentioned in the bibliography) tried to
disseminate based on the musicologist Ashok D Ranade’s preference for the term
over ‘classical music’ for traditional Indian music performed on the formal
concert stage. The cutcheri stage is home to art music, according to the
author, as different from devotional music belonging to the bhajana sampradaya,
though this distinction may not be so clear to many followers of Carnatic
music. It is a lovely distinction by which to highlight the beauty of the music
per se without the adventitious aid of lyrics or bhakti to the gods and
goddesses often hailed in the kritis of the great vaggeyakaras—’bicameral
geniuses’ as the book describes them—who compose both words and tune.
The
author makes an elaborate case for separating art and religious fervour in
concert music, though he says, ‘I will be the first to concede that, in spite
of my views on the relative unimportance of textual meaning in art music,
certain names of gods and adjectives touch a deep chord in me.” We can hardly
argue against Krishna’s assertion in this regard that when a musician presents
a composition, “its very presence must inspire the musician to abstraction.” We
can agree with his assertion that when the composition is seen as a religious
presentation, “divinity becomes the rendering’s principal inspiration” and
“limits the melodic and rhythmic possibilities, as the musician is conscious
that his creativity must not undermine the emotional quality of the religious
content.” As years of listening experience, however, suggest that the more
serious—and therefore more impact-making—musicians rarely waver from their
pursuit of musical excellence, their thoughts focused on music and not
devotion, their religiosity outside music notwithstanding, Krishna is perhaps
addressing here a problem that is not core to the world of the practitioners of
Carnatic music, even if some of its commentators may suggest otherwise. Again
Carnatic music every now and then offers lyrical gems of sublime beauty
focusing on the human condition—especially the total surrender of the devotee
tossed around by his destiny. Such verses, which can move the listener even without
reference to the gods they address, often enhance the beauty of the raga. These
would seem to be examples of ‘art’ music even if their original intent was
‘devotional.’
Known
for his abundant creativity as a musician, Krishna takes the reader on an exciting
journey of understanding the contours of manodharma in Carnatic music in the
sixth chapter of the book, an excellent exercise in deconstructing the process
of improvisation on the performance stage. While explaining the various steps
of raga alapana in considerable detail—as he does all other aspects of
manodharma—he says for instance, “The alapana cannot be an aesthetic form
unless there is cohesion within every phrase, between phrases and the larger
picture that the alapana is painting. The raga exists in every svara as much as
it does in the whole presentation of the raga. The alapana is not a bunch of
known phrases around which the musician creates newer phrases, melodic lines.
It is the distilled aesthetic experience of the raga in its entirety. Thus the
alapana leaves at the end of its rendition a wholesome experience of the raga
and of the creative genius of the musician.” Several similar passages of lucid
exposition of the many components of the whole Carnatic music experience add
weight to the book. They—and the descriptions of the many compositional
forms—are so well thought out and helpful to the reader in augmenting his
understanding of the art form that they could well have added up to an
independent book by themselves.
The
great merit of A Southern Music is its transparent public-spiritedness.
Evidently a man of admirable social conscience, Krishna comes through as a
forceful champion of what is ethical and moral in his field of endeavour and a
vehement opponent of its ills as he sees them. Caste, the place of the
nagaswaram and nagaswara vidwans, gender, the diasporic influence, technology,
fusion, the connection with Hindustani music…none of these issues escapes his
piercing gaze. His views on fusion, the role of overseas Indians in promoting
the art, the suitability or otherwise of foreign instruments, and the
appropriate use of technology in propagating music and learning/ teaching are
particularly well articulated and reflect deep thought on the subject. He has
also dared to go where angels fear to tread while dissecting the history of
caste and gender discrimination. These, especially the caste dimension, are a
poorly documented part of the history of Carnatic music, and it is hard not to
wonder if Krishna oversimplifies their complexity by making the male Brahmin
out to be a rather more deliberate architect of its trajectory in the last
hundred years or so than he has actually been.
There are no easy answers to these ills, but Krishna is absolutely right
in asserting that it is time for our musicians and the people who call the
shots in our music—predominantly Brahmin males as they are—to examine the
troubling legacy of Carnatic music and take corrective measures even as its
reach expands to include greater numbers in its fold.
Over
the last couple of years, the TM Krishna concert format has been a hotly
discussed phenomenon, and in chapter 9 titled The Karnatik Concert Today: A
Critique, Krishna has made an elaborate presentation of his views on the
Carnatic music cutcheri as it is performed today, and the way he prefers to
approach it. He explains for instance why he sometimes does not follow an
alapana with a kriti—going against the norm so far—by saying, “At the
experiential level, after rendering an alapana, I have often felt that I had
finished all that I could present all that I could present of the raga on the
day…” It makes “the whole experience laboured” when niraval and swara singing
are made de rigueur during the kriti that follows. The structural
changes Krishna has been experimenting with in his concerts often polarize the
audience between diehard fans and vociferous critics. So long as the quality of
music remains high, audiences are likely to accept the changes in time, even if
his explanations do not convince the orthodox listener today.
In
his epilogue, Krishna says, “Are all the thoughts I have expressed accurate,
perfect? They are not, and I am glad they are not.” He concludes with the sentence, “As for me, as I write the last
words of this book I know of only one thing: my next question.” Admirable as
such a hint of self-doubt is, the tone of the book is sometimes dogmatic, its
text often clothed in language that leaves little room for doubt. More expert
editing than it has apparently received would perhaps have made the book more
consistently readable, and less heavy as it tends to be at times. All in all, a
truly commendable first book by one of our leading musicians, full of thought
provoking questions vital to the well being of Carnatic music. It resonates
with the amazing clarity of thinking of an obviously brilliant mind.
